Eventila Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates artificial intelligence-based business photography firm Spyne, has raised funding as part of its pre-Series A round, it said in a statement on Monday.
The investment in the Gurugram-based Spyne has been led by AngelList, with participation from the Smile Group.
Angel investors also took part in the pre-Series A round, including Yatra chief operating officer Manish Amin, OYO chief technology officer Anil Goel, Sokrati chief executive officer Anubhav Sonthalia and To The New CEO Deepak Mittal.
While Spyne did not disclose the amount of money it had raised in this round, a report in Inc42 cited company co-founder Sanjay Kumar saying that the startup had secured Rs 4.5 crore ($593,508 at current exchange rate).
In its statement, the company said it will use the funding to enhance its technological infrastructure, especially its AI-driven image-editing suite.
“We are looking to invest deeper in building the next set of computer vision and deep-tech applications solving complex use cases,” Kumar said, adding that the firm has partnered with over 2,500 photographers across 35 cities in the country.
Separately, Goel said he was confident of his investment in Spyne because of its ability to achieve high-quality content production at industrial scale.
The AI-based startup was launched by Kumar and Deepti Prasad in 2018. Kumar is an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus who has worked with several firms including Amazon, Yatra and OYO. Prasad is a Delhi School of Economics graduate who has worked with entities such as Genpact.
Some of Spyne’s clients include Amazon, Snapdeal, BigBasket, and Yatra.
Deals in the AI space
Overall investor and strategic interest in startups employing frontier technologies such as AI and machine learning has risen in the past several years.
Such startups are applying their platforms to several sectors, seeking to augment existing processes, bring down operating costs and allow for product innovation.
Earlier this month, multilingual AI business platform Vernacular.ai raised $5.1 million (around Rs 38 crore) in its Series A funding round. The exercise was led by Exfinity Ventures and the IAN Fund.
Last month, Inflection Point Ventures bet $400,000 (around Rs 3 crore) on Vogueme Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates video meta-tagging and analysis platform Toch.
In March, fashion-focused image technology startup Flixstock India Pvt. Ltd raised $2.5 million (around Rs 18.10 crore) in a round led by Wavemaker Partners. Singapore-based Seeds Capital and India-based Leo Capital also participated in funding the Gurugram- and Los Angeles-based Flixstock.